In recent years, the number of functions that can be embodied in a portable terminal has been growing. That is, in recent years, a portable terminal is configured such that applications of various kinds such as animation reproduction and music reproduction, as well as signal processing in wireless communication, are executable. For example, a portable terminal includes a communication processor (for example, communication central processing unit (CPU)) that performs communication processing and an application processor that executes applications of various kinds. The communication processor and the application processor are in some cases implemented as individual chips, and in other cases are integrated as a single large scale integration (LSI) chip.
Also in recent years, a portable terminal that allows for a plurality of communication schemes has been desired. Examples of the plurality of communication schemes include a second generation (2G) scheme such as global system for mobile communications (GSM) (registered trademark), a third generation (3G) scheme such as wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) (registered trademark) or high speed packet access (HSPA), and a fourth generation scheme such as long term evolution (LTE). It is possible to realize a portable terminal that allows for a plurality of communication schemes, for example, by mounting hardware specialized for each communication scheme in the portable terminal.
However, providing hardware specialized for each communication scheme can result in an increase in the circuit size of a portable terminal. Providing hardware specialized for each communication scheme also makes it difficult to apply a new communication scheme to portable terminals that have already circulated.
Given these circumstances, to date, there have been some cases where a portable terminal is provided with general-purpose hardware, such as a digital signal processor (DSP), and firmware processing is performed using the general-purpose hardware. Firmware processing includes scalar processing that calculates a parameter and vector processing that performs actual signal processing based on the calculated parameter.
Japanese National Publication of International Patent Application No. 2008-507039, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2010-224853, and Japanese National Publication of International Patent Application No. 2010-530677 disclose examples of the related art.